Giving

My introduction to St. Michael’s was when my husband, John Schaeffer, retired from parish ministry and was called to be interim. I was working as a flight attendant in those days so my church attendance was sporadic.When Mother Ann Lukens was called as rector, she graciously invited us to make St. Michael’s our parish home. This was a particularly welcome invitation as we missed having a church family. It was shortly after 9/11, and that horrible event brought home the reality to me that we indeed are living in a very uncertain world, and that a spiritual connection is very important. As we settled in, John would preach occasionally, and I become involved in the life of the parish. After a few years, John developed Alzheimer’s Disease, Mother Ann retired, and I had to cut back on my church involvement.

A friend of mine used to work for Starbucks, and she was telling me one time how Starbucks, with its coffee shops on seemingly every corner, aims to be people’s “third space”. The idea here would be that people spend most of their time at their homes, their places of work, and at their local Starbucks café; and that this triumvirate of places and spaces—home, work, and Starbucks—makes up the backdrop against which our 21st-century lives play out. Now, I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of Starbucks as a would-be “third space” both ingenious and frankly, a bit sad. What is ingenious here is that Starbucks, through all kinds of market research and advertising, has identified and is continually tapping into, a deep need we all have—not just for caffeine, for hot coffee and a highly caloric pastry, but a need for community, for the warmth of belonging and of having a place to go “where everybody knows your name”.

One evening when my daughter was about nine years old, and I was tucking her in, she asked me a question.“Daddy, you know how the universe is so big, and that our gigantic galaxy is just one tiny little galaxy among millions?”“Yeahhhh…” I said warily.“And how the universe goes on and on, and it’s so big you can’t even see the edge? And it might not even have an edge?”“Uh huh.”“Well, that’s kind of scary. When you really think about it for a while. Maybe not scary- unsettling.”“Yeah, it sure is,” I agreed.Then she got to her question: “what do grownups do when they feel so unsettled? How do you feel better?”

I grew up in a small town, attending a small parish. It was the center of our social as well as our spiritual life. I must have been in kindergarten when I told my father I didn’t think we needed to go to church every Sunday. He informed me I was wrong. As I got older I realized how important our faith community was. In our small parish, we all took care of each other as well as those in our greater community.

My name is Dan DeLucca and I’m originally from the Philadelphia area. I was raised Roman Catholic in a faith that was dutiful, clinical, and not very emotional. I was never able to make a connection with the faith of my youth. I never lost faith in God but I did lose faith in organized religion.